eded slowly and cautiously to obtain a position which would
enable him to gratify his curiosity, and witness the humiliation of the
haughty squire. Beneath the window which, he had chosen to look through,
there was a cellar door, from which a pile of seaweed, placed upon it to
keep the frost out of the cellar, had just been removed. The adventurous
inquirer crept up the slippery boards, and gained the coveted position. He
could not only see the committee and the squire, but he could hear all
they said. He was perfectly delighted with the manner in which the captain
put the question to the squire; and when the latter ordered Fred to hang
out the flag, he was a little disposed to imitate the masculine occupants
of the hen-house, a short distance from his perch; but Tom, as we have
before intimated, had a very tolerable idea of the principles of strategy,
and had the self-possession to hold his tongue, and permit the triumphant
scene within to pass without a crow or a cheer.

The battle had been fought and the victory won; and though Tom felt that
he was one of the victors, he deemed it prudent, for strategical reasons,
to commence a retreat. The cellar doors, as we have before hinted, were
very slippery, having been thoroughly soaked with moisture while covered
with the seaweed. When the hero of this unauthorized reconnoissance
wheeled about to commence his retreat, his feet incontinently slipped up
upon the inclined surface of the doors, and he came down heavily upon the
rotten boards. This, in itself, would have been but an inconsiderable
disaster, and he might still have withdrawn from the inconvenient
locality, if circumstances had not conspired against him, as circumstances
sometimes will, when they ought to be conciliatory and accommodating. The
force with which Tom fell upon the decayed boards was too much for them,
and the unlucky adventurer became another victim to the treachery of
rotten wood, which has hurled so many thousands from time into eternity.

But Tom was not hurled so far as that on the present occasion, though for
all practical purposes, for the succeeding half hour, he might as well
have been a hundred fathoms under water, or beneath the wreck of a
twenty-ton locomotive at the bottom of the river. That cellar door was a
bad place to fall through, which may be accounted for on the supposition
that it was not made to fall through. In his downward progress, Tom had
unluckily struck his head against the